{"id":8349,"date":"2016-11-27T17:16:12","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T00:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8349"},"modified":"2016-11-28T18:51:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-29T01:51:50","slug":"thoughts-on-pagan-studies-after-the-2016-aar-meeting-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8349","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Pagan Studies after the 2016 AAR Meeting (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. A Colorado Springs hotel banquet hall, early 1980s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A young business reporter at the Colorado Springs Sun<\/em>, I am attending a big luncheon meeting of the Colorado Association of Realtors (CAR) because the speaker is someone whom I want to cover.<\/p>\n

Before we eat, a Protestant Christian minister delivers an invocation in the name of Jesus Christ. The CAR public relations director, a “business friend” of mine,((We have some other connections \u2014 I learn that as a teen she babysat my uncle’s kids in Denver)) leans over and whispers, “So much for our Jewish members.”<\/p>\n

“So much for the Wiccan journalist,” I think silently, but I am used to being the tiniest minority.<\/p>\n

2. A San Antonio, Texas, hotel banquet room, 21 November 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the last time (see previous post<\/a>), I have risen early to attend the 7:15 a.m. breakfast meeting of AAR program-unit chairs. It’s usually a light buffet meal followed by announcements about new staff appointments, policy changes, and the like. But this time, speaker after speaker veers off into The Election<\/em>.<\/p>\n

All weekend, in fact, I had been subjected to a lot of “inflation” in the psychoanalytic sense. <\/a> The wrong guy won the election; consequently, the American political system would collapse and indeed, life as we know it was threatened on a planetary scale. Because it’s all about us Americans and what we<\/em> do.((Disclaimer: I did not vote for Donald Trump, but he is not the End of the World either. Get a grip, people.))<\/p>\n

Like the Christian minister at the luncheon, every speaker assumed that every other person in the hall shared his or her political position.<\/p>\n

This assumption was richly ironic, considering that the AAR is always talking about strength-through-diversity, etc. The hall held atheists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, even a couple of Pagans, with all racial groups represented \u2014 but politically, apparently, we were a monoculture.<\/p>\n

No hedging, no qualifying, no metadiscourse, no reflexivity \u2014 this was sermonizing, <\/em>with the assumption that everyone in the room was the same.<\/p>\n

Some of my critical theory-oriented religious-studies friends are always accusing the AAR as being quasi-theological and churchy<\/a>.((They usually maintain membership in the North American Association for the Study of Religion<\/a> as well.)) This day they would have been right.<\/p>\n

Leaving aside President-elect Trump, I started thinking that these “normative political and theological approaches” (to quote Russ McCutcheon’s letter<\/a>) were also an impediment to my sub-discipline, Pagan studies.((We practitioner-scholars have already been accused of being “caretakers” rather than “critics,” to use McCutcheon’s terminology.))<\/p>\n

I am more and more pre-occupied with questions of how, for example, taking polytheism seriously as a way of describing the cosmos challenges some ingrained assumptions that remain within the larger discipline of academic religious studies even in 2016.<\/p>\n

Monotheism is just assumed, really. Galina Krasskova described a recent interaction with some of her fellow grad students<\/a>:<\/p>\n

They were teasing me (I\u2019m obviously the only polytheist in the class, and these two knew that so we were throwing good-natured zingers back and forth) about being a polytheist who studies theology and I said something to the effect that we\u2019re taking it back. That actually brought them up short and one said \u201cbut you never had it\u2026Pagans didn\u2019t have theology.\u201d I\u2019ve been pondering that (erroneous) statement ever since because it\u2019s not an uncommon attitude in academia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am not saying that we in the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group should be doing <\/em>theology, but we could be asking in a meta- sort of what what Pagan theologians are saying and writing.<\/p>\n

We may never be part of the Big Five (or Six) religious traditions in the academy, but we can continue, as Krasskova says, challenging their “unspoken paradigms.” Our little field’s existence in the academy tests all their fine language about diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. A Colorado Springs hotel banquet hall, early 1980s. A young business reporter at the Colorado Springs Sun, I am attending a big luncheon meeting of the Colorado Association of Realtors (CAR) because the speaker is someone whom I want to cover. Before we eat, a Protestant Christian minister delivers an invocation in the name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,10,5,79,4],"class_list":["post-8349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-american-religion","tag-paganism","tag-politics","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2aF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11135,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11135","url_meta":{"origin":8349,"position":0},"title":"“Witchy” Cave Is New Obstacle to Mine Expansion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"When I went to graduate school, I wanted to write a paper on how so many interesting natural sites have \"Devil\" or \"Devil's\" in their name. 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Clifton","date":"February 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Back in the 1980s, heyday of The Menance of Cults, the Church Universal and Triumphant (formerly Summit Lighthouse, grandchild of the \"I Am\" movement, great-great grandchild of Theosophy\u2014one of many), was in the second tier, behind the Moonies, Scientology, and the Hare Krishnas (ISKCON). Its leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939\u20132009)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"First & Broadmoor","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/First-Broadmoor.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11292,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11292","url_meta":{"origin":8349,"position":2},"title":"“The Witches of Manitou”\u2014More than an Urban Legend","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The old spa town of Manitou Springs, located in the foothills west of Colorado Springs. Photo by Mark Reis, ( a former newspaper co-worker of mine) from the Colorado Sun. Click to embiggen. The Colorado Sun, an online news site, dropped this into my inbox yesterday, giving M. and me\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"The old spa town of Manitou Springs, west of Colorado Springs","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/manitou-springs.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":347,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=347","url_meta":{"origin":8349,"position":3},"title":"Pueblo and Colorado Springs Compare\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Pueblo and Colorado Springs Compare the \"You might be from Pueblo if\" quiz with the Colorado Springs Independent's recent feature, \"You are sooooo Colorado Springs.\" (Link may change.) I always put it this way: if you go to a party in Pueblo, you might be asked, \"Where did you go\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1323,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1323","url_meta":{"origin":8349,"position":4},"title":"The City Dionysia in Colorado Springs.","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Just when you thought you knew what Colorado Springs was all about,\" commented a poster on one of the Colorado Pagan email lists.It was the City Dionysia festival, complete with a performance of Euripides' The Bacchae.There is, of course, a Facebook page, where you can see some photos.I missed it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5999","url_meta":{"origin":8349,"position":5},"title":"Iron Mountain Ritual Site To Be Restored","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When M. and I read this item in the Colorado Springs Gazette, our hearts soared. When we were newlyweds and bought our first house (a barely winterized 1920s cottage, 740 sq. ft.), it was just outside the lower left boundary of this photo of Iron Mountain in Manitou Springs, Colorado.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"Iron Mtn., Manitou Springs","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/McGees-house.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8349"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8359,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8349\/revisions\/8359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}